The bestest toilet ev-AH!

 I rapidly grew tired of throwing away water and of losing nutrients. Especially when we were short of water, the idea of flushing away excellent compost fodder began to grate on me.

Finally I wrote to a friend asking him where I could find me a compost toilet pan. 'I'll send you one' he said, and he did. The village post service being what it is, it was many months till I came across the pan lying in a neighbour's garden.

And then the building started. I did not want it just for me, but I also wanted to share the concept with the village. A suitably prominent place, next to the village path, was chosen. I wanted it to be pretty, we decided on bamboo.Prakash, Bhuvan, Ganesh and I were all learning how to build it. Many measurements were taken, and many mockups assembled. We all blushed furiously as I tried to explain in my hindi just what the various holes were for and how they worked.


The cost? It came to around 40K, excluding the pan. I still have some material left over, and we pay a premium to truck stuff in from the nearest town. For the pan, I'd add another 10K including transport.

Would I do anything differently? Not for myself, I think it is perfect as it is.But as a demonstration unit, I'd go with a pan cast at home rather than one procured from outside. It would make it seem a lot more doable.

But now it is ready and it is stunning. Seriously. I have not seen a prettier one. The walls are bamboo, the roof is bamboo overlaid with tin. There are tall slits in the walls upto waist level to let in plenty of air and sunlight. It sits below an oak tree, and soon grasses will be planted along its base. The floor is prosaic concrete, but sprinkled with glass beads.

But  don't just believe me. Here are pictures

View from the front.We have a curtain instead of a door, which G rather disapproved of at first

This is the view from the house. Soon, I will plant grasses along the base.

The inside. Note the sparkly floor and the rustic TP holder!

I started off with dried leaves in the base.Not necessary, but I thought the carbon would do my compost good!

Here's a detail of the 'door' (hung on a sunflower stalk) and the 'windows'

Bonding

When I first moved to Dun and found myself friendless, I had begun looking among the office-wallahs for someone to hang out with. One of these had caught my eye, but to initiate friendship would have meant negotiating office hierarchy and gender politics. Consequently, I never invited S over for coffee. Three years later, I realised that I might have missed something.

I was regaling my colleagues at lunch with tales of my last trip in the mountains. When I was describing the drive, I said, ‘The worst thing about a pine forest is..’

‘A lack of undergrowth!’ interjected a gruff voice behind me, completing my sentence perfectly.

I turned around in disbelief to see S, the twinkle in his eye mirroring the one in mine. As the office looked on, we simultaneously burst into the uproarious, thigh-slapping laughter that is born of a shared embarrassing secret.

For those who don’t know why it is a bad thing, think about the long drives, the tiny hamlets, the utter lack of toilets. Think about the poor researcher forced to go on a long-ish trek till she is over the ridge just so she can be out of her colleagues’ view. Think about her discomfiture as she squats in relief and then notices a cowherd on the slope facing her.

Undergrowth is a good thing. Shared laughter is even better.

The Simple Life

That’s what my mum has decided to adopt here in Sawantwadi. And it is pretty much, the life of my dreams. It’s low-impact, calm and friendly. My mum wakes at 5 and sits watching the birds come to her garden and looking for any flowers that might have blossomed overnight.

A big part of this simplicity is her desire to be as self-reliant as possible. So we have a compost pit which will be just fine once the rain stops sloshing down, she’s growing some of her food, and she’s harvesting her water from the skies.

The Konkan in the monsoons is never short of water. So far, we have been managing just fine with a couple of buckets in rotation: one being used in the house, one under the downspout which gets filled every 5 minutes. This necessitates a lot of running in and out of the downpour with buckets, and is not something I want mum to do when she is alone.

And so the home-made rainwater harvesting system. Rajan (a chap who comes around every couple of days to do odd jobs in the garden) and I fixed a pipe to the downspout using willpower- it is too wet to use a solvent glue. This was steadied with a post. I then stole mum’s cleanest dish towel and used it to make a rough filter. We slipped a collapsible pipe over it, tied it on tight, let the other end into her water tank and then the real work began. This was the gentle nudging out of all kinks in the pipe so that it would carry water instead of storing it. An hour or so in the rain and now it seems to be working.

It definitely is not as pretty as a rainwater harvesting system can and should be. In some ways, I feel like I cheated it of its potential- wonderfully aesthetic and functional things can be done by playing with various downtakes. But it was done in a morning, my mum can dismantle it whenever she chooses, it filters and transports her water, and it was done for a total cost of Rs600 /- . Not too bad.

Am depressed

Back home, my sister thinks I am fighting the good fight and saving rivers. In reality, am utterly ineffectual.

I am at work right now, and my colleague has asked me for help designing a dam. It is small, but on the main drain of a catchment area. Worse, the amount of water stored does not justify the damming of a river. Even worser, the dam is most likely on a Mahseer run where hundreds of fish swim upstream to lay their eggs. Next year, they will find their way blocked by concrete. Unable to comprehend the futility of their desires, they will continue to batter against an unyielding obstacle until finally, they die.

I ask my colleague, 'do you know that there is a very strong probability that the stream is a fish run? Where Mahseer come to lay eggs? That you are blocking their access? That they will DIE?'
He stares at me uncomprehendingly.
I try another tack, 'It is doubtful that the dam will justify its cost'
'The villagers asked for it', he says, irritated at the turn the conversation has taken.
'so what?' I persist 'did they hold a gun to your head that you cannot refuse?'
He laughs at the crazy woman.

When in Himachal, I did that..I negotiated my way out of just such a dam. But now I am powerless and sad. There's more. At one level, there is my 1.5m high Mahseer-killer. At another level altogether, there's this. Jairam's professional ethics are being labelled his 'whims'.

I want a blanky to hide under.

The Scented Forest

I am no forest-wallah, so please do take all that I say with a pinch of salt.

Now that the disclaimer is over with, I can start theorizing.

The pine trees in Uttarakhand confuse me to no end. The very first time I traveled in the mountains, I gasped in delight as I saw the pine forests. And they ARE beautiful. The forest floor is covered with needles that form a smooth red carpet. From this carpet rise the straight trunks- also red and with markings resembling those on a giraffe. The tree then forms a neat head of long deep green needles that glow silver in the sun. 'There are few things more beautiful.' I enthused. I was censoriously harumphed at by my colleague. 'There is nothing more terrible' he corrected me.

And that largely sums it up. All the villagers and development workers I have spoken to have informed me that Pine is a ruthless invader, first brought by the Britishers and then propagated by the Forest department. It ignites and burns their land, takes over productive oak forests, covers the soil with an impenetrable cloak of needles, and adds nothing to the local economy whatsoever. The only use they admit to is for firewood, and needles for bedding cattle. It would be hard for them to deny the lopping for firewood, because it is difficult to find a pine tree that has not been pruned till it resembles a mangy paintbrush but they will not admit to any other use. Pine forests are now the battlefield between the Govt and the villages. Google 'chir pine' though, and the first sentence informs you that chir pine (pinus roxburghii) is 'one of the most useful trees in the region'.

I dont know which story is true. Perhaps they both are. One thing though is that pine trees are exploited to within an inch of their lives. In addition to the  lopping I mentioned earlier, they are also tapped for resin. Each tree is scarified and  fixed with a little pot to collect the aromatic sap. 

Over time and with repeated harvestings, the tree becomes a mass of scars

I understand that forests need to be used, and that this can be done sustainably. I also understand that communities depend on natural resources for their survival and that this harvesting of resin generates revenue which enables the protection of forests. I do believe that fortress conservation is a Bad Thing.  But there is also something called carrying capacity. And I fear that we have long ago exceeded that.

And leaving conservation-speak aside, the child in me still believes in dryads and living trees. Those wounds must be painful.

Forlorn

Also hungry, tired, soaked, utterly lost,a wee bit scared, and wanting their mothers..

Two intrepid engineers out to plan rainwater harvesting programmes find the intrepidity being leached out of them.

Fatigued and dehydrated

A few weeks ago, I had boasted about how I make pasta from scratch when I am 'too tired' to cook a proper meal. This week, I realised that this only applies to physical tiredness.I have been soul-tired for the last few days. And this has meant no posting, no keeping in touch with friends, no housekeeping, and store-bought patties for lunch.

Why the tiredness? I don't know. Or at least, I find it difficult to pick out a single reason. The Mangalore plane crash. Work. The heat. The lack of water. People watering down their concrete paths in spite of the lack of water. People refusing to consider demand management as an option. A colleague was complaining of being forced to use only one bucket of water for his bath! That is a luxury for most people!

But today, I was vindicated in a way. There are three households in the complex where I live. For the last two days, the others have been lugging up buckets of water because their taps are running dry. I turn on the tap with abandon..or atleast, as much abandon as I normally exercise when it comes to water. The nice man who is the Man Friday of the establishment told me that he would help me carry the buckets up, and was amazed when I thanked him, but refused and explained that I have water in my taps.

The reason? Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

I do the first two zealously.

Reduce: Bathe in a half-bucket of water. It gets one just as clean as the three buckets a colleague was boasting of using. Shut the tap while brushing teeth, scouring dishes.

Reuse: Use laundry water (wash and first rinse) for flushing, mopping. Second rinse goes to the plants. Shanpoo under the tap, use the water for mopping. The water in which beans and dals have been soaked goes to the plants- they don't worry about flatulence!

As for the third, I have heard of peeing on plants, but I ain't going there!

Demand Management. A good mantra to live by.

Snarl!

I tend to stay away from rants, activism and politics on this blog, but now it's getting personal. How can the world hound a crush of mine and not expect me to take up arms? 'The world' is a bit of exaggeration. It is a small section of the world..But that does not mean that I cannot snarl in protest!

Jairam Ramesh, our minister of environment and forests is being upbraided for..well, for doing what he is supposed to do. One of the responsibilities of the MoEF is to assess the environmental impact of large infrastructure projects and accordingly give clearance to them. Sadly in the past, our government has only read the 'give clearance' bit. Today, we have an official who truly understands his job and is willing to do it. Instead of being commended, Mr.Ramesh is facing flak from cabinet ministers and from the Prime minister's office 'for delaying clearance'. He has been called, among other things, a 'green roadblock'.

A part of my job entails scrutinizing the environmental impact assessment reports submitted for hydro-electricity projects. These have made me weep. These are ideally, meant to be written to present an objective assessment of the projects concerned. Objective, hah! The remuneration of the EIA consultant is subject to approval of the project, which is a strong incentive for 'pushing' the project instead of 'assessing' it. Further, the reports have been written assuming complicity on the part of all its readers. Which means that there is not even an attempt at appearing to be honest, leave alone being honest. Large paragraphs are common to several project reports- irrespective of suitability. Over  and over, the assessment is contained in one sentence 'this project has no negative environmental impact'. Damming a river, in the Himalayas, in a biodiversity rich, fragile, landslide prone cannot have NO impact. The reports are full of blanket statements like these,and Mr.Ramesh's insistence on accreditation indicates that he has read them.

I am a fan- a delirously swooning, cheering fan-  of Mr.Ramesh's based on his statements in the press and what little I've seen of him. There was his statement on taking office that ' a 98% clearance rate of projects by the MoEF is a sign that the ministry is not doing its job' which had caused M and me to do a little jig around the office. He attended part of a seminar I had gone for, and had come for it on time and having read the report and reflected on it. That is almost unheard of in India. During the Bt brinjal issue, he took the trouble to have several public meetings, and gave democracy a fighting chance. And now there is this.

Shabaash, mere Jairam!

(Thanks to cats-and-facts dot com for the image)

Keoladeo National Park

Not that I am given to posting poems on this blog, but with the drought in the country, and with the conversation we are having in the river conservation group, I wanted to share this..

In winter, the lake is alive
brimming with life giving water,
dancing to the touch of every wingtip,
resounding to the calls of the flock.
She is shelter, joy, rebirth.

But summer comes and the flock leaves.
She is left alone to struggle
against a hundred demands on her existence.
She shrinks, withdraws into herself
diminishing, stagnant, forgotten.

Does she feel like crying out to the flock to stay?
“Do not go. You are life for me.
Without you I am scared.
Stay with me, help me in my struggles.”
But it does not matter what she feels.

It is not in her nature to stop them,
as it is not in the flock’s nature to stay.
The parting a necessary part of the story.
Dying necessary for rebirth. All this she knows.
And still she dreads the summer.

disconnected.

How did we become so disconnected with our world, I wonder. When did it begin? For the past week, I have been coming across several examples of the way we expect the earth to continue providing. Actually, that statement is not absolutely true. We don't really think of how are needs are being met.

Sadly, this attitude does not even change when there is a crisis. 'somebody' is supposed to 'do something'. My sister was telling me of the garbage crisis in Pune. Pune's garbage landfill is now full, and the villagers are protesting against a health hazard in the vicinity of their homes. And who can blame them? Matters have reached crisis-stage now with some of the dumps of uncleared garbage self-combusting. This constitutes a major fire hazard, as most of the public trash collection points are near the slum areas. Summer showers are due too, and that might lead to an epidemic.

The solution is not to look for another dumping ground, but to lessen the amount of garbage in the first place. But how many people are willing to consider that? despite the considerable awareness about the harmful effects of plastic bags, people ask for them, fight for an extra bag with the vegetable vendors. Pune has in place a household segregation drive. It did not even work in the area where I live- an area where the affluent, educated, presumably-aware people live. Segregation is still done by the rag-pickers, mostly women and children, who climb into trash buckets with no protective gear whatsoever and pick through our waste for a few rupees. The rationale for not segregating one's waste at home seems to be, 'they will do it.'
This does not make sense. The knowledge that a human being will soon be touching your garbage should be incentive to segregate, to infuse some dignity into the process, rather than the other way around. As it is, people like my family who do segregate the garbage are considered to be wacky and naive at best.

I see this in unexpected areas too. from my wacky and naive point of view, a professional gardener should be intensively in tune with the earth. I expect that he or she has a keen awareness of what the earth needs, and a desire to nurture all that forms part of the garden. however, that seems not to be the case. My landlady has employed a gardener whose main concern is to keep it looking 'tidy'. This, for him, takes the form of obsessively removing the plants as soon as their flowers are past the peak, leaving the soil between the plants bare, and pruning in straight lines. This goes against the grain of all that I believe. You see, the garden is not a flower vase to display the best roses and dispose of them once they wilt. A patch of land is an organism, and everything has a function. Plants produce flowers by borrowing nutrients from the soil. Once they die, they give back those nutrients- with interest. Even as they decompose, the leaves and stalks shade the soil, prevent water loss, and provide shelter to small animals. If plants are pulled up after the flowering season, the soil is cheated of its nutrients, the animals are killed, and the garden becomes sterile. As every organic farmer knows, the essence of gardening is making sure to give back more than one takes..

This is a very hippie post, isn't it? but no, I have not been smoking pot. I did have a cannabis plant in my backyard, but last week the gardener pulled it up.

addition to the process and product rant

Pope said it best, of course.

For forms of government let fools contest;

Whate'er is best administer'd is best:

Cold Science, Warm Fuzziness

This is something I have only seen in the development sector. If someone found a cure for a disease you would not reject it on the grounds that a shaman will not be able to understand the process and so the cure will alienate him, would you? Then why are good processes for environmental conservation set aside because they are not inclusive enough?

Every process is only as good the product it delivers. If the ritual more important than the reason, well, you have just founded a cult. I am totally in favour of inclusive decision making, in favour of sharing, and yes, in favour of using techniques and material that make sure every stakeholder understands what is going on and can express his/her/its concerns. For me, it is important that every stakeholder has a voice.

That is why including the socio-cultural aspect in studies is important- because that is the language used by those who cannot speak developmental jargon. And the people who cannot speak the jargon, who speak in terms of culture and spiritual values, are some of the most important stakeholders- they are the forest dwellers, the subsistence farmers. So to underline the point, for me, this is a language I use to make myself understood, and to understand. As I converse in English with my colleagues, in Marathi with villagers, I also listen in Culture.

But what about those stakeholders who cannot even make themselves heard through rituals? Are these not the most marginalized, and should efforts not be made to listen to their needs? I speak of the ecosystem. The only way for the rivers and the forests to express their needs, and the only way for us to understand what they say, is through the language of science. How can a river ecosystem tell us of its non-negotiable instream requirements, other than by past flow measurements? In these days when villagers are dissociated with their environment, they cannot be the spokespersons for the hills. The ecosystem must speak for itself, in whatever language it chooses to.

Monitoring ground water levels, tracking migratory fish populations, measuring biomass, counting mayfly larvae in a stream- these may not mean much to the human dwellers of an ecosystem and will not translate into immediate benefits for them. And so these studies are considered a downright waste of time. A study that results in data that is not important or useful to the villagers, or may not be easily understood by them is considered elitist. To me, it is possible to look at it in the exact other way. Just as development workers take pride in the fact that they take the effort to go to the dalit vastis to facilitate meetings- despite the fact that it means less than nothing to the Rajputs/ Brahmins who make up the majority of the population, we also need to take pride in trying to converse with the non-anthropoid and even the non-sentient members of an ecosystem. Every stakeholder already has a voice and is shouting out to us, we need to listen.

What I do

I am slightly embarrassed that it has only just occurred to me to write about my work. My main project- what I have been employed for- is working on Himalayan rivers. This involves studying the threats to the river ecosystems- including but not limited to planned hydropower projects. This I will be doing with the community, and I am excited about sharing EIA reports with villagers and analysing these reports with them. My desk work- which I am also excited about- involves attempting to establish a system for assessing environmental flows for Himalayan rivers. This is daunting, as the sub-continental response to environmental flow is “Eh?” and even the Government of India persists in talking in terms of ‘minimum flows’ which is NOT environmental flow. Environmental flows mean that the natural cycle of a river, with floods and low flows need to be followed. For this, it is necessary to know the natural flows in the river, and this information is either classified (!) or just not available. Interesting times.

Currently, though, I am working on another project. India’s five-year plans have so far been set by expert committees in Delhi. This time, the government is making an effort to decentralize the process in 250 districts which have been noted as Backward Regions. The idea is that 4 people in each village are trained in participatory micro-planning, and facilitate the creation of a village plan. This they submit to the technical support (which in Uttarakhand and Orissa, is PSI, the organization I work for). They then compile the plans at the Block and District level, and Voila! One has a district plan. This is being done for the first time, and I think it is democracy at work. I am very excited by it, and yes, there are problems. It is just too new for the villagers to get right at the first go, there are far too many vested interests at far too many levels, and ensuring equity is such a major challenge that my team-mates and I need to meet and cry on each other’s shoulders after each field visit. It will not be perfect this time. It won’t be perfect the next 5 times, but every time it will be better. The 6^th time, it won’t be perfect either, but it will be a darn good plan. And that, people, is almost enough.

Grassroots

Those of you who know me in my guise of a cushion propped up on a settee next to a steaming mug, picture this:

Imagine a steep and fairly loose mountain, clad with pine and strewn with slippery needles. The colours are intense- startlingly blue cloudless sky, intense green pine with silvery tips, rust-red trunks and floor. On the mountainside is carved a narrow path like a string tossed onto the mountain. Along it, moving ever-upwards, one hand always maintaining contact with the mountainside, are three people: a handsome, forty-ish man who looks every precise inch the Junior Engineer that he is, a painfully shy and painfully young priest-by-birth-development-worker-by-training, and a sofa cushion complete with tassels and all.

Two of the three are wearing expressions of ferocious concentration. The cushion is wearing a fatuous grin. “Hee” she is thinking, “This is me; I am here. I am a grassroots worker in the Himalayas walking 7 km to a mountain hamlet accessible only on foot to help establish decentralized governance. Wow. ”

Quote of the week

“If the most oppressed person of the village is not included in the planning process, then even if you account for every naya paisa after implementation, your plan is still dishonest.”

Surendra Bhandari, Jan Kalyan Samiti, Ghat, District Chamoli.

Politically incorrect, absolutely biased rant.

You know I have had some reservations about settling in Dehradun for the first few weeks. I have shrugged it off by saying ‘new place, adjustment issues’. But let me get the reasons off my chest and then we can move on to talking about the weather, ok?

I thought I will be moving out of the hindu fanaticism belt when I left Maharashtra, so it discomfited me (to say the least) that it is alive and kicking here.

I arrived in D’dun on a Sunday, and the first thing I did was buy a local paper. The main article in that rag attempted to advise the government on how to deal with terrorism, or rather, with terrorists, or rather, with that entire section of society that has been labelled as “terrorist”. Apparently ‘we’ need to deal with ‘them’ they way they are treated in ‘their countries’ with an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Who is we? And who is them? And which country are you talking about, exactly? Does the author seriously believe that India has a spotless human rights record?

The next week, I am off to the hills, and in a village near the Nepal border, I come across a ‘situation’. Policemen aplenty, onlookers even more, much shouting, and in the centre of it all, three-four wretched, roughed-up youths.

“What is happening?”

“ They have been arrested.”

“why?”

“They were taking some cows to Nepal to be slaughtered.”

“Ah, they stole the cattle.”

“No, no. They are traders. But they were going to slaughter them. And killing gaumatas (the cow as mother) is a sin.”

(I did not do anything. I could not have done much, but I did not even try. Forgive me)

So let me get this straight. Cow-slaughter is not banned in India, but it is considered to be a ‘sin’ by some good citizens, and so one is liable to be arrested for the intent to slaughter a cow. This is ok, as it is ok to beat up some poor youths who are trying to make a living any legal way they can. It is ok to slaughter goats and chickens, ok to wander into a Reserved Forest with a gun and shoot at endangered animals, ok to beat up other humans, and also ok to let those wretched cows starve to death, but NOT ok to do something which will provide food for around 20% of the population and apparel for the entire population (I mean seriously, where do these ban-on-cow-slaughter enthusiasts think their shoes come from?).

My boss greets everyone with a “Jai Ramji Ki”. Which I forgive because he just does it to be contrary, he hasn’t been seen in a temple since he got his set of permanent teeth, and most importantly, he does not impose it on other people. The office gardener however, is a different story. Gem of a man, no doubt, and has a keen understanding of roses. He greets everyone with a “Hari Om”. The first time I met him; I greeted him with a “Namaste”, and was gently corrected. Since then I greet him with a Hari Om, as does the entire staff, but on the days when I am preoccupied and slip up, I am always corrected “I prefer Hari Om, Madam. This way, the Lord’s name is on our lips.” When I am reading or working and merely grunt in reply, he stands directly in my line of vision and repeats the Hari Om till I get the subtle hint. This is not a big deal, but his insistence is annoying- like a grain of sand in my shoe. One of these days I am going to greet him with a ‘Salaam Aleikuum’. That way also, the Lord’s name will be on our lips, don’t you agree?

My mother and sister, not to worry. I will stop short of getting myself lynched.